Good grief!!

On Thu, 27 Jun 2002 17:57:41 -0500, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:
<snip>
>> Unlike the '*' wildcard, the '?' is a "one place at a time" wildcard.
>> If you have two files -- BEO1.123 and BEO15.123, BEO?.123 will refer
>> only to the first one.  I honestly cannot remember if BEO??.123 would
>> refer to both files, but I think not.

>> It's been a looooooooooooooong time since I had to use that trick.  I'd
>> honestly forgotten about it until I saw the subject line show up on the
>> list. <G>  I imagine the the use of '?' could come in handy in some
>> complex batch files ... I hope I remember it should I need to write some
>> in the future. <G>

> Good tactics L.D., but they didn't work for me.  One of the problems
> with this troublesome file was that when I did "dir" in the directory
> that it was in, it wouldn't even be listed!   Even when I did
> "xdir +h" it would not be listed!  I could see the file and its
> "apparent" name by using a DOS file viewer utility.

If you "couldn't see the file," then the first thing to do is use attrib
to remove hidden and read only attributes.  Then & only then can you
delete the file.

These days you can do that using DOS.  But anyone who uses a REALLY old
DOS and wants to be able to change attributes on both files and
'directories' drop me a line and I'll send you a couple of my "mad
hacker of the 80s" programs that will do the job for you. :>  I still
use those programs, via batch files; have never used the DOS attrib
program except to test it once. <BG>

l.d.
-- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/

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